


Faith, Love and Hope

by Enigel



Category: The 4400
Genre: F/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Belle in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Faith, Love and Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Belle in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge.

"I don't know what to say, Uncle Tom. Some of the things Kyle says... They turned true."

Shawn's honest face was shadowed by concern and doubts.

"Well, _I_ know what to say, and that is no!" Tom said energetically. "I'm not drinking your Kool-aid."

"Dad," Kyle said, with the same fanatical light in his eyes that made Tom shiver and his heart clench painfully. "Dad, why are you so stubbornly against this? Is it because it comes from me? Do you think I couldn't possibly know more than you do?"

"Kyle, don't start this, you know it's not about that."

"No, dad, I didn't start this, and we need to be honest with each other. That book says you too must take Promicin for the prophecy to fulfill! This is bigger than you and me, bigger than Jordan, bigger than our differences."

Kyle's fervent smile was driving Tom crazy. He couldn't remember when his own son had slipped away from him. Perhaps it had been a gradual process along all their lives.

"You're talking about an alleged prophecy that says Paradise will come to Earth. Do you realize how this sounds, Kyle?"

"What's so wrong about Paradise, dad?"

Tom scowled and bit his lips, pacing back and forth.

"Where do I _begin_? Did you forget that about 50% of the people who took Promicin or were forced to it by the outbreak _died_?"

"You're guaranteed to survive, dad, you're in the book!"

Tom stopped pacing to look his son in the eyes. There was a time when he had thought they'd patched things up, that they were a family again, he and Kyle and Alana.

"Oh, really? You said the book only says, and I quote from memory, that those are the people that still have to take Promicin for that crazy prophecy to fulfill. It didn't say anything about their _surviving_. Maybe that prophecy wants me dead, Kyle. Did you consider that?"

Kyle looked honestly hurt by this.

"No, it wouldn't do that. It's about building a better world, dad."

"On the ruins of the old one?"

"Our world was doomed anyway, that's what sending the 4400 was all about from the beginning. We were on the path of destruction, and the 4400 were sent to save us."

"Yeah, and then the others, whoever they are, sent their own representative, and now there are a number of Marked people in key positions - I should know, I was possessed by one - how can you claim to keep track of who's on which side?"

"I have faith," Kyle answered serenely, and Tom felt his anger flare and then deflate in the face of such conviction. One man's fanaticism was another one's faith, and vice versa.

"I'm sorry, Kyle," he said tiredly. "I don't have the same faith in Jordan or the 4400."

"Would you at least allow Kevin to determine scientifically if you're compatible with Promicin? This way you'll know. You don't trust faith, trust science."

"Fine. But it's just that, and I don't want any more harassing about this. And I want a third party of my choosing present."

"Sure, dad, anything."

Kyle was so happy and relieved, it broke Tom's heart.

* * *

If Tom was hoping for an easy way out through the test being negative, he was disappointed. The minimal requirements of the parameters Kevin indicated were well surpassed by his whatever bit of the brain they were measuring, and Tom felt he couldn't deny Kyle the satisfaction of an 'I told you so'.

"I told you too, son, this doesn't mean I'm going to do it."

"But will you consider it?"

"Kyle... Danny got a power too. Remember how that ended?"

Kyle turned sad eyes on him.

"What if mine turns out to be something destructive?"

"I... I don't think it will be like that. I think you're meant to play a great part, dad. A part for the good."

"You've got me the science to prove I'd survive, Kyle. But on the question of good or bad we're still talking faith."

He turned and left the lab, rushing to get outside, to get some air, some perspective. He didn't realize how tense he was until his hands started hurting and he saw his white knuckles.

Maybe the ridge between Kyle and him had never been fixed, only patched. Their connection had eroded with each time Tom was too busy to pay attention to Kyle, too engrossed in his work to even remember him for a whole day, too tired to work up the warmth to strengthen their bond. Alana had been an unexpected gift into their life, Alana and her talent for love and kindness.

* * *

That day, after he left the lab, he felt like walking - it didn't matter where. He wanted to shake off his frustration through physical exertion, to punish his body for what his mind had done or rather not done.

His apparently aimless stride took Tom straight in front of the gallery, and then he couldn't resist the masochistic tendency to enter and soak his soul in the sight of Alana. Through the impenetrable barrier of time, she was looking right at him from the frame of those paintings. He liked to think she was granting him forgiveness, but he himself could not forgive.

He hated the cruelty of people who could play with destinies like this, who had used her like a pawn - first to make him happy, then to punish him.

That was the day the dreams began.

* * *

After the fortieth night of vivid, tormenting dreams - tormenting through their happiness, tormenting through their promise - a ragged and scruffy Tom called his son and spoke quickly, before he could change his mind.

"I'm ready now, Kyle."

He wouldn't look his son in the eyes as he got ready for the shot. Shawn was standing by, just in case, even though tragic previous experience showed that not even he could heal those whose bodies wouldn't accept Promicin.

He fixed a point on the ceiling as he felt the needle pierce his skin. He'd have prayed if he were the praying kind. Instead, he focused on what he wished for the most and hoped that if there was a higher power out there, the good intentions would have to do.

* * *

Tom didn't feel all that different after the shot.

"We'll have to wait for your power to reveal itself," Jordan said. Like everything the man said, it sounded zen and mystical. Tom was sick of mysticism and left the building as soon as he was cleared to do it.

* * *

The gallery was unchanged. What seemed like the same visitors paraded the halls, talking in hushed whispers, pointing out paintings and styles and brush strokes.

Tom slipped through them, uncaring for any room but one.

"If I have a power, I want it to bring me to you," he told the painting, in tones even softer than those of the regular visitors. To the casual observer he'd look like a harmless kind of crazy, he supposed.

"Wherever you are, I miss you, and I need you, my love."

The room blurred.

"I'm fainting," thought Tom, "maybe I shouldn't have left so soon."

When he came to, he was sitting on the floor, but it wasn't the same floor he'd been standing on before.

Alana's image was still in front of him, though, and it looked so alive, so _present_.

"Tom?"

Her voice was unchanged, the same voice that had haunted his dreams for forty nights. Tom felt tears pooling in his eyes, like in every one of those dreams, because they were as vivid as the scenarios that Alana's power could conjure but they were lying, cruel deceptions.

"Tom, how... how is this possible?" she was asking, and Tom shook the blurriness from his eyes, because this was not in the dreams, this was different.

"Alana," he said, a whisper more than an assertion.

"Thomas!"

Her arms around him felt real, the texture of her shirt as it soaked up his tears couldn't, just couldn't be a dream.

He surrounded her with his arms and wished for home, for a family.

He didn't dare open his eyes until he heard Kyle's astonished voice, the questions, the welcoming cries. Alana was stroking his face, her own eyes gleaming with tears. She looked just a little bit older, but she was there, alive and in the present.

For the first time Tom felt something akin to what he saw in Kyle's eyes.


End file.
